


Don't Die, Asshole

by tryslora



Series: All Our Yesterdays [26]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Children, Community: fullmoon_ficlet, Hurt Jackson, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Rabies, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-30
Updated: 2014-06-30
Packaged: 2018-02-06 19:35:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1869807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tryslora/pseuds/tryslora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Despite not being up to full strength, Stiles accompanies the pack when they go after the creature attacking teens in Beacon Hills. Jackson doesn’t approve.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Die, Asshole

**Author's Note:**

> The warnings here are for the fight that occurs and death of the opponent (none of the crew of Teen Wolf).
> 
> This was written for prompt #74 - Trick at fullmoon_ficlet. As always, I do not own the characters or world of Teen Wolf, I just like to play with them.

Jackson can smell the way the pain pulls on Stiles, the way it saps what little reserves he has. There is no way that Stiles should be out with the pack, no way that he should even be out of _bed_ , and yet, here he is. Jackson counts himself lucky that they convinced Nikki and Caleb to stay behind with the Hale and Lahey children, otherwise he’d be trying to keep track of his injured ex-husband and his daughter, and he’s not sure he’d have anything left for the creature they’re tracking.

“…signs of intelligence.” Stiles is mid-sentence, hands waving. “It’s clear, if you know where to look, but whoever it is doesn’t have human facility in any coherent fashion. It’s more like it’s someone who used to be human, but that’s been stripped away. It’s gone.”

Derek stands with his arms crossed, head lifted and nose flared. “Wolfsbane.”

Scott nods. “More than I’d think could stay in the air.” 

Cora sneezes and pushes at her nose, and Jackson only inhales hard enough to taste it once before he starts sneezing himself. 

“Don’t die on me,” Stiles murmurs, somehow at his elbow, and Jackson doesn’t know how he managed to get there so quickly, moving as he is with a cane and a heavy gait.

“Same to you,” Jackson mutters, blowing air out roughly through his nose to expel the last of the wolfsbane. “It’s not thick enough that it’s going to do damage to any of us, but if it’s coming off of what we’re chasing, that thing is covered in it. Like it bathed in it, or it’s exuding it through its pores.”

“Wolfsbane is _not_ a recommended facial ingredient for shapeshifters,” Stiles deadpans, ignoring the look that gets him from Cora, Isaac, and Lance. Jackson tries to swallow his smirk, amused.

“How much humanity do you think remains?” Scott asks, and Jackson has to admire the control Scott has, the way he has matured into this method of running a pack with multiple alphas. Scott leans down, picks up dirt, sniffs it carefully. “They’ve been here recently. What do we need to watch out for?”

“Enough intelligence that we’re not just chasing an animal,” Stiles says.

“We’re chasing an incredibly intelligent _injured_ animal,” Athene points out. “There’s blood in the air, and if I’m not wrong, more than one type. It doesn’t belong to the kids from the other day.”

There’s a brief moment of silence as they all remember the last group of kids who didn’t heed the warnings after the first two murders in the Preserve. It seems to be a fault of Beacon Hills that the teenagers never do manage to learn better, and not all of them are as able to survive as this pack became.

“We’re splitting up.” Scott marks four directionals on the ground, digging his fingers through the dirt to leave scent behind. “Follow the tracks for one half hour, then regroup back here. If you find something, call out.” He doesn’t name groupings, but they all line up anyway: Cora and Lance along one line, Derek and Athene opposite. Scott and Allison stand together, and Isaac places himself near Jackson and Stiles, arms crossed and ignoring them. “Go,” Scott orders.

“Stay here.” Isaac gives Stiles a look, and lopes off.

“No.” Stiles does his best to follow as Jackson moves after Isaac. “I’m not standing here alone as bait, and you’re not enough of an idiot to make me do it.”

“No, what you’re doing is making me choose between letting Isaac go off on his own and letting you stay here and be eaten.” Jackson scowls and snaps, “You shouldn’t even be here, and this is why.”

“I’m capable—”

“Under normal circumstances, _yes_.” Jackson can’t argue the point that Stiles is a part of the pack on his own, that his magic is strong in its own way, and that he works hard to keep up physically. The physical part has been disturbingly evident the last two weeks as Jackson has helped wrangle Stiles in and out of showers, helped him dress until he could do it himself. It has put Jackson closer to his ex-husband than he’s comfortable being while trying to ignore how he still feels. But it has also let him see exactly how damaged he was. “Not today.”

“We are not getting into this now.” Stiles digs the tip of his cane in the dirt, dragging himself forward. “You know that creature is out there, you know this is our chance to end it. And you’ve just let Isaac go off—”

“I didn’t _let_ Isaac do anything, he went off on his own.”

“Because you’re arguing with me!”

“I wouldn’t be arguing if you had an ounce of sense in your head, but no, you _still_ haven’t grown up enough to look after yourself!” Jackson growls, stepping in close to Stiles, inhaling the rough scent of anger and frustration as he pushes into his space. All he can think about is _shutting him up_ , claw-tipped fingernails gripping Stiles’s shoulders, pulling him closer. He’s just about to close that mouth, _silence_ him, when something bowls into him from behind and rips him away from Stiles.

“Jackson!”

He has no time to think about it, no time to do anything but shift, clothes ripping as he pushes his wolf hard, past angry eyebrows and sideburns and into thick muscles that are too much for his shirt to contain. He howls as he leaps onto the creature—cheetah, his mind has just enough time to process before teeth rip into his shoulder, and the pain is blinding. He dimly hears Stiles talking in the background, but he can’t concentrate because this _thing_ is taking all of his attention.

He fights back, tasting blood like he hasn’t in more than fifteen years. It’s hot and wet and it drives his wolf to the bring until he howls with the need for more. His control is slipping and he doesn’t know if he can go back. If he can _let_ himself go back; she will shred him if he lets up.

Her skin is soft against his, covered in dirt and faint fur, sliding over him as she rubs against him, simultaneously weirdly sensual and angry all at once. She teases at him then bites, going for his throat, but he’s too quick for that. He rolls them both over, pinning her briefly before her eyes flash blue and she throws him off. He snarls and flashes his eyes back at her, watching the way she recoils at the color. There is still something human in there, something that knows what she’s become and is afraid when she sees it in him as well.

He leaps at her, hearing Stiles’s cry of _Jackson_ and dimly registering that his ex-husband is trying to stop him, keep him from killing this _creature_ that has an underlying sense of humanity. He crashes into her and she tries to slash at him, but he pins her, growling his dominance. They lie there for a moment and he waits for her features to shift and change.

She slides back into her human body slowly, hair pale and curled around her face, tangled with briar and weeds. Her eyes are a soft dove grey, and she smiles gently. Softly. There’s a hint of wet at the corners, and she mouths words at Jackson that his wolf can’t quite grasp.

He isn’t ready for the attack when it comes, isn’t prepared for the way she goes back to animal lightning quick, claws slashing across his throat. He only feels the warm spurt of blood and the way it floods from his body until he drops back, collapsing onto the ground.

There’s a _snikt_ and blood blossoms on the cheetah’s chest, another bolt quickly joining the first before she falls, light already fading from her eyes.

“ _Jackson_! Oh fuck, dudes, help me out here.” A hand covers his throat, fingers sliding in the blood, and Jackson looks up to see Stiles staring down at him, brown eyes terrified. “Same to you asshole,” Stiles whispers. “You leave me—you leave _us_ —and I will hunt you down in the afterlife and kill you myself. And then I will give your body to Nikki and let her do it all over again, and you know she _can_.”

He wants to say that he isn’t going anywhere, that he can heal, but it’s impossible to talk right now. Instead, Jackson closes his eyes and retreats into humanity, energy gathering to heal his body.

His human mind sees what his wolf could not, and he knows what she tried to say.

_I can’t_.

#

“You don’t need to stay.” Stiles’s voice filters through Jackson’s awareness, irritation clear in the words.

“Really? You’re back on the heavy pain killers after trying to lift _Jackson_ by yourself, and now you’ve got two small kids that you’re insisting on keeping here. Do you really think Nikki can handle this on her own? You need an adult here because you two are obviously incapable of being adults yourself.” Isaac’s snark is dry and sharp, punctuated by the thin cry of a small child. 

Jackson inhales, tasting the air, trying to figure out the situation before he opens his eyes. He tastes wolfsbane and something else he doesn’t know, medications and the scent of small children and diapers. Unfamiliar small children. He blinks into the light, twisting in the bed.

“He’s awake.”

“I see that.” Stiles holds Jackson’s hand, thumb sliding over his skin. “Welcome back to the land of the living, dickhead. You have no idea how lucky you are that Nikki didn’t start screaming.”

“Where is she?” His voice is rough, throat aching.

Stiles shakes his head. “Nikki’s fine. Don’t talk; you’re still healing. Deaton thinks you should stay silent for a week at least, which I know is an eternity but that cheetah did some damned good damage. You’d be dead if we hadn’t had an entire pack there to take care of you.”

“She’s dead.” He has to say that one more thing, confirm what he already knows.

“Yeah. The cheetah is dead.” Stiles stops stroking him, closes his eyes as he squeezes Jackson’s hand. When he flicks his gaze at the door, Isaac leaves, taking the scent of child with him. They’re in the office, and Jackson is in the bed that was set up for Stiles, sprawled across it and leaving his ex-husband no room to sleep.

Stiles smiles wryly, following the path of Jackson’s gaze. “Yeah, it was my turn to sleep in the chair. But given the meds I’m on, I’m feeling no pain for a while here, so it didn’t matter. I think my back could be twisted into a pretzel and I’d just be fascinated by the idea that I could see the ceiling while my head’s by my feet.”

Jackson doesn’t need that image of Stiles bent over and looking up, and he blinks rapidly to try to clear his mind. 

Stiles flushes slightly, but keeps talking. “Anyway. You’ve been unconscious and healing already for a solid twenty-four hours, and we’ve gotten information in the meantime. Our cheetah’s name was Lindsey Bell, and she was out of Ohio. We’re not sure how she ended up here, but she’s a born were-cheetah and she’s been on the run for about three months since leaving an abusive husband and pack mate. Somewhere along the way she was infected with a rare form of disease that only affects weres. Essentially, it makes them rabid. Transmitted by bite.” Stiles pauses, words slowing. “We figure she caught it somewhere between Ohio and Beacon Hills, and that she was drawn here by the Nemeton after it. She may have killed her attacker; we don’t know. And yes, she bit you.” Stiles’s gaze drops to Jackson’s shoulder. “Deaton’s treating it. Which is why you might feel drugged. You’re on a heavy cocktail of wolfsbane and about six other herbal infusions. Which means you are officially in worse shape than me at the moment.”

Jackson stays silent, not because he’s been told to but because he needs time to assimilate the barrage of information. He tenses at the idea of something infecting him, _changing_ him and controlling him, and he thinks he understands what she meant now. _Lindsey_. What Lindsey meant. “She wanted to die,” he says carefully, ignoring the glare Stiles gives him for talking.

“Yeah, we think she probably did. It might be why she came here in the first place, putting herself in the way of a pack that includes hunters, so that she’d die.” Stiles looks up, sideways, anywhere but at Jackson. His fingers moves again, slow and steady over Jackson’s skin, cementing that connection between them. “She was more animal than anything else at the end, but she had enough intelligence left to try to trick us into killing her,” he says quietly. “She also tried to lure us away from her kids, and when you and I stayed behind—too close to the den she set up—she attacked.”

“She knew she was becoming the monster.” It’s a concept that’s all too familiar to Jackson, remembering what he had been when he first changed, and Stiles squeezes his hand in response.

“Yeah, she knew. But her kids… she kept them safe. She was mostly out of her mind, and she still kept them fed and changed diapers and made sure they were safe.” Stiles’s tongue flicks out, wetting his lips, gathering himself before speaking. “Two of them: one boy and one girl. We know their names from our research, and they’re both really young. Stephen’s maybe four months old; we think she ran off to keep him safe. Haley’s just about eighteen months. They’re still babies.”

“You’re keeping them.” Because Jackson can see it in his eyes, knows it follows the discussion they had so recently about children. That’s why the kids are in the house, why Isaac is there acting as pack nanny and helping out.

“For now, yeah.” Stiles lifts one shoulder, lets it fall. “We’re making contact with her pack; we’ll talk to them about it. Scott doesn’t want to send the children back into something that’s a potentially dangerous place for them. Especially if the pack wouldn’t do something about it in the first place, if they even knew. It’s possible she chose not to tell them, if her husband had a higher standing than she did.”

That says more than anything else, that the pack Lindsey was from was more animal than human, a different social structure than the one in Beacon Hills. It grates on Jackson’s nerves; he doesn’t like the idea of humanity being stolen away, giving up entirely to the beast within. He’s been there, and in his opinion, it never ends well.

And if he’s honest, the idea of the children staying appeals to him.

He doesn’t look too closely at that.

Instead, he pats the bed. “Lie down.” When Stiles hesitates, Jackson growls softly. “You’re exhausted. Get on the bed and _lie down_.”

“Will it shut you up?” Stiles shakes his head, climbing up and helping Jackson rearrange himself so that they lie side by side, Stiles’s head pillowed on Jackson’s shoulder.

It feels natural, like coming home to be surrounded in Stiles’s scent again. Jackson inhales and lets it out roughly, a low whine in the back of his throat. Stiles slides his hand over Jackson’s chest, and the beast eases, comforted.

“Shut up,” Stiles says softly. “Close your eyes and rest. Let the crap work and heal you. Okay?”

Jackson makes a noise of assent and wraps one arm around Stiles, holding on, anchoring himself in the presence of his ex-husband. And he lets go.


End file.
